We study the low frequency comovements in unemployment, inflation and the federal funds rate in the U.S. From 1970 through 1979 all three series trended up together; after 1979 they all trended down. The conventional explanation for the buildup of inflation in the 1970's is that the Fed reacted...

We develop a technique for analyzing the response dynamics of economic variables to structural shocks in linear rational expectations models. Our work differs fromstandard SVARs since we allow expectations of future variables to enter structural equations. We show how to estimate the...

A number of authors have attempted to test whether the U.S. economy is in a determinate or an indeterminate equilibrium. We argue that to answer this question, one must impose a priori restrictions on lag length that cannot be tested. We provide examples of two economic models. Model 1 displays...

We study identiÞcation in a class of three-equation monetary models. We argue that these models are typically not identiÞed. For any given exactly identiÞed model, we provide an algorithm that generates a class of equivalent models that have the same reduced form. We use our algorithm to...

We propose a method for estimating a subset of the parameters of a structural rational expectations model by exploiting changes in policy. We define a class of models, midway between a vector autoregression and a structural model, that we call the recoverable structure. As an application of our...

New-Keynesian models are characterized by the presence of expectations as explanatory variables. To use these models for policy evaluation, the econometrician must estimate the parameters of expectation terms. Standard estimation methods have several drawbacks, including possible lack of...